Wednesday, 11 June 2014

Forest Ecosystems of My Country: Their Nature (Characteristics) and Importance to the Future of My Country.

Forest
Ecosystems of My Country: Their Nature (Characteristics) and Importance to the
Future of My Country.

Kiribati is
one of the pacific countries that situated along the equator and it comprises
of 32 scattered low coral islands plus one high island which is Banaba Island. Kiribati
is divided into four groups of islands which are Northern Kiribati, Central Kiribati,
Southern Kiribati plus the line and Phoenix Islands. This essay based on the
forest ecosystem in Kiribati. In Kiribati the forest cannot actually identified
because the land is definitely small and low where there are just several
numbers of indigenous and non-indigenous plants found on the islands. The
forest in Kiribati may be only portrayed by the assemblage of plants and crops
in a particular place and this may be called as bush or shrubs.

To begin
with, the types of forest ecosystem found in Kiribati are the mangrove shrubs,
the coastal vegetation and the agro forest. The distribution of forest in
Kiribati depended on the climate patterns and the availability of fertile soil.The
distribution of the mangrove shrubs is mostly concentrated along the ocean and lagoons on the islands of
Kiribati but it mostly growing in the northern part of Kiribati. The coastal vegetation on the other
hand mostly found on coastal areas at both at the lagoon and ocean side as well.
However the agro forest is just basically found on South Tarawa which is the
capital city of Kiribati and it mainly found in the middle of the land.

The table
below shows the biotic and abiotic factors which affect the distribution of plants
and animals in Kiribati.

Names
of Forest

Abiotic Factors

Biotic
Factors

Long Term

Short Term

Long Term

Short Term

Mangroves

Inorganic waste

Deforestation

Digging Canal

Ocean current

Coastal vegetation

Natural fires

Salinity

Sea level rise

Nutrient-availability (fertility/food
availability.

Agro forest

Climate change

Soil, climate (including rainfall
amount and distribution.

Adaptation/adaptability

Food availability.

According to
the table above it shows the biotic and abiotic factors that actually affect
the distribution of the forest in Kiribati. Biotic
factors are those of living things, which are animals or plants that influences or affects an
ecosystem (Dictionary.com). For instance, the living organisms are plants, animals,
fungi and single celled organism. Abiotic factors on the other hand refer to
the non-living factors which included air, water, climate, and soil. Examples
of abiotic factors are humidity, pond, sunlight, rainfall, soil etc. All these
factors actually affect the composition, structure, health and functioning of
forest ecosystem in Kiribati as a result of pollution or natural phenomenon.
This whole system could be altering the life of those organisms within a
particular ecosystem. This happened when people alter the environment through pollution
such as using the sea or an area on land for their dumping site. If there is
more increase in sunlight, then it can easily destroy the plant life and many
species in the ecosystem. Mangroves
shrubs are actually the good examples where they affected naturally by the inorganic
waste where this intrudes its life cycle because people themselves use it as
their dumping site. Besides, the distribution of coastal vegetation actually
affected by sea sprays because of sea level rise as this causing them to die or
even not growing well as they lack in
the nutrient-availability that need it to survive because they located closely
to the sea. However, the agro forest actually affected by the climate change in
Kiribati. Climate change having a desperate impacts on the lives of crops and
plants in Kiribati because it limit the amount of rainfall that needed by those
plants and it affects the food chain of that particular crops.

Furthermore,
in Kiribati there are various species of organisms found in a particular
ecosystem. Mangrove is the main plants species that found in the mangrove
shrubs but it having four different types of species but basically found on islands
in the northern part of Kiribati. These included TeNikabubuti(White mangrove),
TeAitoa (Black mangrove), TeTongoBuangi (Oriental mangrove) and TeTongo (Red
mangrove). The structure of mangroves is not very thick where you can also walk
through it during the low tide because they are not actually growing together
as they grow distantly from each other of about 0.5 meter in-between if you observes
the place(Observe). This type of forest distributed discontiguously in Kiribati
because some of the species are not specifically found on all part of the
country but rather fragmented. Besides that, there some dominated plants that
also found existing in the coastal vegetation in Kiribati. These include
tekaina(Pandanus Tectorius), tekanawa(CordiaSubcordata),
teuri(GuettardaSpeciosa),tekiaiai(Hibiscus Tiliaceus),
teren(TournefortiaArgentea), and also including grasses. .The coastal
vegetation having no structured because it just included some small plants and
even small grasses where this enable you to walk toward these plants freely.
The agro forest ecosystem is well structured where the plants growing in a sequential
order because the people planted them well. The types of plantsfound in this ecosystem are cucumber, water
melon, coconut palm, lemon tree, papaya, banana, the native fig or
tebero(Ficustinctoria), the common fig, tebiku(Ficuscarica), lime, mango, and
many others. This ecosystem combined both the indigenous and non-indigenous
plants. The animal founds in the forest ecosystem in Kiribati are mostly small
animals and tiny insects such as caterpillar, bees, birds, crabs, flies, fungi,
single celled and many others.